February 2012 • - Nightwire Magazine

He was wearing a blue T-shirt with the words TEAM PETERemblazoned on it in large yellow lettering.“Hello,” said the staffer in a bored voice that could have beenthe voice of any clerk in any overgrown bureaucracy. “My nameis Gabriel and I’ll be your induction coordinator.” Bill startedto ask a question, but Gabriel interrupted him. “No, I’m notthe Archangel Gabriel. I’m just a guy from Philadelphia namedGabriel who died in a car wreck at the age of 17. Now giveme your name, last name first, unless you were Chinese inwhich case it’s first name first.” “Gates, Bill.” Gabriel startedsearching though the sheaf of papers on his clipboard, lookingfor Bill’s Record of Earthly Works. “What’s going on here?”asked Bill. “Why are all these people here? Where’s SaintPeter? Where are the Pearly Gates?” Gabriel ignored thequestions until he located Bill’s records. Then Gabriel lookedup in surprise. “It says here that you were the president of alarge software company. Is that right?” “Yes.” “Well then, dothe math chip-head! When this Saint Peter business started, itwas an easy gig. Only a hundred or so people died every day,and Peter could handle it all by himself, no problem. But nowthere are over five billion people on earth. Jesus, when Godsaid to ‘go forth and multiply,’ he didn’t say ‘like rabbits!’ Withthat large a population, ten thousand people die every hour.Over a quarter-million people a day. Do you think Peter canmeet them all personally?” “I guess not.” “You guess right.”So Peter had to franchise the operation. Now, Peter is the CEOof Team Peter Enterprises, Inc. He just sits in the corporateheadquarters and sets policy. Franchisees like me handle theactual inductions.” Gabriel looked though his paperwork somemore, and then continued. “Your paperwork seems to be inPhotographyCommercial Photography, artistic perspectivewww.katelynrosephotography.comorder. And with a background like yours, you’ll be getting aplum job assignment.” “Job assignment?” “Of course. Didyou expect to spend the rest of eternity sitting on your assand drinking ambrosia? Heaven is a big operation. You haveto pull your weight around here!” Gabriel took out a triplicateform, had Bill sign at the bottom, and then tore out the middlecopy and handed it to Bill. “Take this down to inductioncenter #23 and meet up with your occupational teacher. Hisname is Abraham.” Bill started to ask a question, but Gabrielinterrupted him. “No, he’s not *that* Abraham.” Bill walkeddown a muddy trail for ten miles until he came to inductioncenter #23. He met with Abraham after a mere six-hour wait.“Heaven is centuries behind in building its data processinginfrastructure,” explained Abraham. “As you’ve seen, we’restill doing everything on paper. It takes us a week just toprocess new entries.” “I had to wait *three* weeks,” saidBill. Abraham stared at Bill angrily, and Bill realized that he’dmade a mistake. Even in Heaven, it’s best not to contradicta bureaucrat. “Well,” Bill offered, “maybe that Bosnia thinghas you guys backed up.” Abraham’s look of anger faded tomere annoyance. “Your job will be to supervise Heaven’s newdata processing center. We’re building the largest computingfacility in creation. Half a million computers connected by amulti-segment fiber optic network, all running into a back-endserver network with a thousand CPUs on a gigabit channel.Fully fault tolerant. Fully distributed processing. The works.”Bill could barely contain his excitement. “Wow! What a greatjob! This is really Heaven!” “We’re just finishing construction,and we’ll be starting operations soon. Would you like to gosee the center now?” “You bet!” Abraham and Bill caughtthe shuttle bus and went to Heaven’s new data processingcenter. It was a truly huge facility, a hundred times bigger thanthe Astrodome. Workmen were crawling all over the place,getting the miles of fiber optic cables properly installed. Butthe center was dominated by the computers. Half a millioncomputers, arranged neatly row-by-row, half a million ........Macintoshes ........ all running Claris software! Not a PC insight! Not a single byte of Microsoft code! The thought ofspending the rest of eternity using products that he had spenthis whole life working to destroy was too much for Bill. “Whatabout PCs???” he exclaimed. “What about Windows???What about Excel??? What about Word???” “You’re forgettingsomething,” said Abraham. “What’s that?” asked Billplaintively. “This is Heaven,” explained Abraham. “We need acomputer system that’s heavenly to use. If you want to build adata processing center based on PCs running Windows, then.... .... GO TO HELL!”Where Are We?There was a pilot flying a small single engine charter plane,with a couple of very important executives on board. Hewas coming into Seattle airport through thick fog with lessthan 10m visibility when his instruments went out. So hebegan circling around looking for landmark. After an hour orso, he starts running pretty low on fuel and the passengersare getting very nervous. Finally, a small opening in the fogappears and he sees a tall building with one guy workingalone on the fifth floor. The pilot banks the plane around, rollsdown the window and shouts to the guy “Hey, where am I?To this, the solitary office worker replies “You’re in a plane.”The pilot rolls up the window, executes a 275 degree turn andproceeds to execute a perfect blind landing on the runway ofthe airport 5 miles away. Just as the plane stops, so does theengine as the fuel has run out. The passengers are amazed26 • February 2012